


Cure-All

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fluff, Incest, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-04
Updated: 2012-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-30 14:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/332580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave is in the full throes of influenza and hating every minute of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cure-All

**Author's Note:**

> Request from a fic giveaway on Tumblr.

.

.

.

Dave doesn’t think it’s fair for Texas to have a flu season. He thinks that kind of sick shit should be reserved for cold climates, for assholes who live in complete dipshit states with a ton of rain and awful weather like, oh, just picking two at random, New York and Washington.

That’s how people get sick after all, right? By running around in the rain like a complete idiot, or sitting outside for hours without a coat to spite any nearby parental figures.

Not by staying safe inside a cozy fucking apartment and minding their own business.

And jungle asshats who come from obscure islands in the middle of fucking nowhere can go choke on their equally obscure jungle fevers, because they’re not getting off that easy even if they claim to have super strong immune systems from years of eating organically grown fruits and vegetables instead of take out and frozen pizza every day.

Who the fuck even eats vegetables anyway? No one but smug goddamn tropical broads who should go get themselves a case of Amazonian Giant Bee Disease, that’s who.

If Amazonian Giant Bee Disease is even a thing.

Not that he’s actually wishing sickness on any of his friends- not “you should get more fresh air!” Egbert or “You know there just so happens to be a CVS offering free flu shots down the street from you,” Lalonde, or even “Told you so, told you so!!!” Harley.

He’s just in a bad mood, and possibly a bit delirious. 

Mostly because he’s been leaning over a toilet for the past ten minutes, puking up bile and green nastiness and the saltines Bro forced him to eat less than an hour earlier.

He’s in the full throes of influenza and hating every minute of it.

He wishes he could blame it on Bro, and honestly he was the one to get sick first, but they infect each other so often he can’t exactly hold it against the guy. He probably still owes Bro like, a truckload of ‘get out of being blamed for the flu’ cards from that time he brought home chicken pox from school.

Dude’s scarred up something fierce all down his right side from scratching.

Dave’s own forehead is graced with two similar scars, barely there half-moons usually hidden by the sweep of his bangs. It’s that portion of skin that he leans against the cool porcelain in front of him now, his hair pushed back to leave clammy, paler than ever skin on display. He breathes out, shaky, swallows hard as a wave of nausea threatens, and glances to the door.

He hates being sick. He feels out of shape, not as sharp as he normally would be, and when he tries to think back and figure out just when Bro showed up in the bathroom doorway he can’t pinpoint the time. It might have been just seconds ago, or maybe the guy has been keeping watch over him while he hurls all along.

He’s kind of hoping it’s only been a few seconds.

“You alright?” Bro asks, just barely concerned. He still sounds sick, kind of rough, but at least he looks a hell of a lot better than Dave. He’s at the tail end of his sick week, while Dave is stranded somewhere in the middle.

“Fucking swell,” Dave says, and brings his arms up to rest on the edge of the toilet, so he can lay his head sideways across them and look up at Bro looking down at him, for once without any dark lenses in the way.

Looking like a complete badass takes a backseat when you’re throwing up your guts and sneezing every five seconds. It’s unfortunate, since Dave feels even more out of sorts without the familiar shades in place. Fortunate though, he guesses, in a weird sort of small way, because he can see the way Bro’s slight smile reaches his eyes in a way he never would on a normal day.

“Just makin’ sure I don’t have to haul your ass to the hospital or anything.”

Dave snorts, which is a bad move and just makes him feel worse, sighs, “I’m not dying, bro, just yawning in dazzling Technicolor.”

“Charming.”

“Always,” The word comes out in a near groan and Dave closes his eyes, takes a minute to just feel like hell. He’s hot right now, burning up and on edge, but any minute he knows he’s going to sink back into deep aches and a chill he can’t ditch, no matter how many blankets he wraps himself in.

When he opens his eyes again Bro is still there, still leaning against the doorway, watching him closely.

It takes a minute, but when the slow realization dawns on him he’s honestly amazed and he shouldn’t be, ought to expect this shit by now.

“Are you…are you seriously staring at my ass right now?”

Bro raises his eyebrows, almost laughs. He’s got to still be sick or he’d have a much better handle on himself, would have stifled the sound before it got anywhere near an audible level.

“What can I say? Those Thundercats pajama pants are doing good things for you.”

Dave glances down at his legs, having completely forgotten about the cross eyed half-cat freakjobs patterning his “made in China” sleepwear. His brain is seriously just shot.

He tries hard to think of a good retort, eventually stumbles into one that seems decent, “I know I’m pretty hard to resist when I’m bent over something, but since that thing happens to be a toilet…”

He shrugs, halfhearted.

Across the room, Bro shrugs back, “A plush rump is a plush rump, Dave.”

“Bullshit. This rump is flatter than week old coke.”

“Plush enough for me.”

Dave groans again, partly from feeling like he’s going to hurl and partly because sometimes Bro makes him want to bang his head against a wall with how creepy he is, with how bad he doesn’t mind him being creepy at all.

He flushes the toilet, sits still just long enough for the heat in his face to wear off. A chill starts to set in and he stands up shakily, wipes his mouth and feels like death warmed over and put on ice, “On second thought, maybe I am dying. Tell my friends I went down in a blaze of glory. Flames everywhere. Stars exploding. Dinosaurs raging overhead. Giant squids in there…somewhere.”

Bro stares at him, at his face instead of his ass this time, and the fact that Dave is sounding like more of a rambling moron than usual goes unsaid. He gets a pass on that kind of thing while he’s sick.

Bro still frowns though, looks unsure.

“You want me to grab the trash can so you can chill on the couch and still vomit with wild abandon?”

“Holy shit, yes please.”

.

.

It turns out the trash can wasn’t really necessary, and Dave’s barfing fit is basically done for the day. He still feels like shit though, even after he rinses his mouth out. He huddles on the futon, sniffling and coughing and being disgusting, trying to hide under a blanket so Bro can’t see just how disgusting he is.

“Dave if you get snot on the futon I’ll kick your ass.”

Whoops.

“I thought you liked my ass.”

“Doesn’t mean I won’t kick it.”

“Doesn’t mean I won’t call CPS.”

Bro lobs a box of tissues at his head, strokes his thumb gently over the place it struck moments later when Dave complains that he really might actually be dying, probably from head trauma.

“You’re really milking this, huh?” He asks.

“Look, all I’m saying is, if you don’t put my corpse in a glass coffin in the woods I’m gonna haunt the shit out of you.”

“No self-respecting prince is going to take the time to make out with your dead body.”

Dave tries to wiggle his eyebrows suggestively, ends up sneezing seconds later.

He talks Bro into sitting with him on his death bed, futon, whatever, and after a while Bro admits that he feels like he might still be dying a little bit too, and settles in against one arm rest with no intention of getting up any time soon.

And since he plans on staying, Dave drags a blanket with him and crawls up onto Bro’s chest, curls up and shivers against him, kicks the blanket off and sprawls out wide when his chills melt back into fever.

He winces any time Bro coughs, nuzzles into his neck and feels sleep threatening to overwhelm him. Bro’s arms rest comfortably around him, hands soothing over his back and occasionally dropping lower, copping a feel just to be a dick.

“What do normal people do when they’re sick?” Dave asks after a while, when the Steve Wilkos show credits are playing on TV and neither of them wants to move for the remote.

“Wow Dave, what makes you think we’re not normal?”

“No shut up, I’m serious,” He moves to rest his chin on Bro’s chest, so he can catch his attention and look him in the eyes, “I mean like, how do other people deal with this shit? Chicken soup? Heavy drugs?”

“Hell if I know, I’m not other people.”

Dave sighs and tips his head to the side, gets back into a comfortable position, “Yeah, thank god.”

Bro almost laughs again, coughs instead, can’t stop coughing for a minute and when he finally does, he reaches up and feels Dave’s forehead, checking his temperature as an excuse to stroke his hair back into place. Dave moves into the touch like a kitten and Bro just shakes his head, “Man I hope you get over this soon. I don’t know how much more I can take of you acting like a sweet and tender fawn.”

“Stop being so nice to me and maybe I’ll bounce back.”

Bro threads his fingers into Dave’s hair tighter, like he might pull, might drag him up for a kiss, but ultimately smoothes the bunched blonde back down, murmurs that he’s biding his time.

Dave scoffs back that as soon as he’s back in fighting condition, Bro’ll be the first to know.

They fall into lazy, comfortable silence.

Eventually he gropes for the remote and switches to one of the public access channels, all educational bullshit and badly filmed concerts from the 90s.

They watch “Celtic Thunder” and it is the most hilarious musical performance in the world.

Dave passes out halfway through an infomercial for the best bra ever and Bro lets him sleep, rubs slow circles across his shoulder blades and admires the gold tipped edges of his eyelashes.

He lets Dave drool on his shirt and decides not to kick his ass for it later.

.

.

.


End file.
